Looking ahead to the 2024/25 campaign, Head Coach Chris Beech sat down with the club website to discuss how he has found pre-season whilst looking ahead to the 2024/25 Vanarama National League campaign.

The Coasters faced plenty of EFL opposition in pre-season and face Solihull Moors on the opening day at Mill Farm.

Speaking to the club website, Beech is pleased with how pre-season has gone and is looking ahead to another rollercoaster season in the National League.

Beech said: “The lads have been brilliant. We’re really pleased with their attitudes and their applications and their work on the grass. But also the way they’ve applied themselves to information, the gym, their personal diets, they’ve been really professional.

“We haven’t done any boxing classes or anything out of the ordinary, we’ve kept everything football related and simple but selective.

“We were always looking to create a competitive squad and we’re not there yet, we’re still a few players away from doing that. It’s important for us to have almost two players in each position who can fight it out for the respective shirt.

“Football is a selfish game but you create a team ethos, culture and environment which is something we do a lot of work on but it’s important from a management perspective that we have options and that the environment is competitive.

“For example, we looked at the goalkeeper situation, Ben (Winterbottom) came in – and we was very thankful to Brentford for letting him train with us – and we took him on loan to create competition with Theo (Richardson).

“We’ve also taken steps to add to our defensive capabilities that we’ll be able to announce soon as we need to cover ourselves for what could happen in the early parts of the season.

“Referees can be quite intense at the start of the season with rules they’ve been given over the summer and whilst of course, we don’t want this to be the case, last year we had a lot of sending-offs at the beginning of the season so we need to have ourselves covered for those kind of situations.

“The thing that has pleased me the most about pre-season has been the player’s attitude and application. I came in for a couple of days in late May and numerous dates in June with a selection of players who wanted to do some work ahead of pre-season.

“The selection was filled with a few of the academy lads who have reaped the benefits from that – Jesse Hailwood for example, who had a brilliant debut against Blackpool and earned a contract off the back of that. Those days along with the work done at St Andrews which contained three sessions a day – sometimes even trying to have a fourth, has meant the lads have worked really hard to be where we are at.

“The application of the staff has been brilliant too and everyone at the club. We’ve all chipped in around certain areas whilst we looked to fill some gaps and whilst it initially stretched me and Nick (Anderton), we’re in a good place now and everyone has pulled together. We also thank the chairman for his continuous support as plugging those gaps wouldn’t be possible without him.”

Looking ahead to facing Solihull Moors on the opening day, Beech knows the strengths that Saturday’s visitors hold ahead of their trip to Mill Farm.

“We know how good of a side they are. We know the quality they have and Andy has built a really good team with good signings.

“They’ve got a familiar face with our old skipper and he’s a great lad so we know the quality they have. I’ve been there a few times and it’s a clean, well-run club and we know they’ll be wanting to get off to a good start this weekend.

“But we know we have to apply ourselves and if we do that, then we stand ourselves in good stead.”

Finally, ahead of this weekend, Beech is as excited as ever to get going into competitive action once again.

“I’m feeling the emotions of every manager ahead of the opening day. I’m excited and apprehensive, but it’ll be good to get going again and feel the connection with the supporters once again.

“Like I said, the club is in a good place and whilst there’s still some bricks that need filling in, we’re building really nicely and we’re close to where we want to be.”